God created this Earth and human beings, making them the most intelligent of all the living organisms. Yet when they know their wrong doings, they make no attempt to save it, till the wrong is finally done and extra efforts are required to recover it….showing their concern for the mishap.

Aral Sea is one of the classic examples of such ruthless human action. Just to the east of the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea lies between the countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. At present the sea is just 10% of its original size and will disappear completely in the coming years. The Aral Sea tragedy started when the Soviet Union decided to divert the rivers flowing into the sea, to maximize cotton production. Fertilizer runoff, weapon testing residue left here by the Soviet Unions further polluted the sea, killing all life in it and changing the ecosystem surrounding the sea.

Aral Sea map paints a true picture of the shrinking sea. Beginning with the year 1960, Aral Sea was a healthy sea water body, undisturbed by human intervention.

As time progressed to 1990, the Aral Sea had shrunk a lot and by 2000 the entire water mismanagement effect was clearly seen.  The 2010 map of Aral Sea shows that Aral is split into four different water bodies; where the lower three are connected by narrow channel.

A tiny part of the Aral Sea has been saved by Kazakhstan by building a huge barrier and with reintroduction of marine life, attempts are going on to revive whatever remains of the Aral Sea.

In the first major air crash of 2010, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea killing all 89 people on board. The world has witnessed many such air crash disasters in the past. World Air Disaster map is an interactive map application, indicating all major air crashes of the world since 1998.

The mouse-over icon will show the airline, the route on which it was flying, causalities etc. In conclusion it is an informative map showing air disasters of the world.

Well I’ll blame it on the cold drugs, but when I finally got around to posting last night I posted for Thursday and not Wednesday. Anyways, here’s what’s happening at SixSuitcaseTravel.com.

• We have the review feature up on 1762 of our almost 2800 hotels.  Help families like you, leave a review!
• We have interactive maps for the state pages of 25/50 states done.  This will help you find the smaller towns, suburbs, and cities in metro areas that are covered
• Approximately 450 of our 1000 pages have been switched over to our new look
• We continue to search for new hotels,  I have a list of 17 Baymonts to add to the site
• We’re increasing our tweets, follow us on  twitter for updates on new hotels and affiliate specials
• We’re always looking for guests to post here,  our dream is to have one or two mommies from each state
• The next family travel newsletter comes out tomorrow.  Don’t forget to sign up!

As always your ideas, comments or suggestions about SixSuitcaseTravel are welcome.

Below are links to each of the Walt Disney World Theme Parks.  Each theme park web site contains a link to an interactive map.  You can open the interactive map by clicking on the “View Map” link just below the park hours on the right hand side. You can zoom in on the map and see where all the attractions are located in the different theme parks.  If you click on the attraction in the map you will be linked to a web site that contains information about the attraction along with photos and videos of the attraction. 

•  Magic Kingdom
• Animal Kingdom
• Epcot
• Hollywood Studios

Take a break from basting that turkey or calling your relatives to make sure they’re each bringing the right dish tonight: the New York Times published this really cool assortment of interactive maps that shows us what’s cooking around the country this Thanksgiving. The Times tallied search queries for the 50 most-searched recipes on AllRecipes.com and tied them to their states of origin (some tricky I.P. address technology, I imagine).

Are you making sweet potato pie? Cheesecake? Deviled eggs? Do you need a recipe for turkey brine? Green beans? Stuffing? See what people in your state are searching for! Do your tastes match theirs? Find out here!

(Image courtesy of SeriousEats)

The internet is a magnificent toolbag, filled with a plethora of gadgets and gizmos that can bring a piece of writing or a blog post or a story to life. But journalists and photographers and bloggers and editors have to be careful with how and when they use them.

The image below, for example, requires no audio, no interactive map and no words to aid its impact.

Captured in Iraq and depicting children showing their disapproval at the war, it draws such power as a still image.

Equally, this image, of a suspected Viet Cong member being assasinated in Saigon, in 1968, truly tugs at the emotions.

However, the use of such tools as interactive maps or audio can dramatically enhance a story – particularly where a journalist has less powerful images to hand.

Maps depicting murders across a region or country, or disaster maps can make a story really hit home for a reader.

Take this map from the BBC website. It shows every murder or manslaughter of youngsters over the last 18 months. The map enhances the experience for the reader by illustrating the severity of the problem and enhancing the home-photographs which make less impact as sole images.

The technology we now have at our disposal can provide an invaluable tool, but they have to be used in the right way and at the right time.

When I first logged onto the 10,000 Words Web site, I figured I’d come across a few interactive maps that would display the locations of national landmarks, political data or simple point A to point B directions.

After a few minutes on the site, I realized maps, specifically interactive ones, have come quite a long way in providing any and all sorts of data.

My personal favorite: the FluTracker. This map proves to be useful for the hypochondriac in us all, as it collects data from news reports, official sources, etc. to display the various H1N1 cases across the world. Users can easily see all types of cases, from suspected to fatal.

FluTracker allows users to see flu cases across the globe.

Another potentially useful map, perfect for all the ambulance chasers out there, is Public911. This one tracks all the active and closed emergency calls for a specific city. As of now, it only cover the Seattle area, but hopefully it will expand in the near future. I’m sure there’s a lot of other people out there, like myself, who would find pleasure in seeing what the local emergency crews are up to.

Users can track active and closed emergency calls.

This last one is just terrifying. The Geography of Jobs map shows the number of jobs gained (with green circles) and the number of jobs lost (with red circles) across the U.S. What makes the map most interesting, as well as frightening, is that users can look at data from 2004 to the present. While the end of 2004 displays large green circles throughout the nation, the end of 2009 displays large red circles enveloping much of the map.

As a soon-to-be college graduate, I can’t say this map was comforting.

No, those large red circles are NOT a good thing.

As someone who constantly finds himself late on all of the technology trends, I’m certainly glad I checked out these interactive maps. As exciting as Google maps has seemed for the past few years, it was about time I opened my eyes to what else is out there.

The first map I chose to check out at 10,000 Words was a great interactive map of the casinos in Las Vegas, courtesy of the Las Vegas Sun. Out of three aspects of the map, I chose specifically to focus on the strip portion.

First of all, having been to Las Vegas, it’s almost surreal to stare at a color version of the strip, with all the hotels seemingly in the exact location that they actually stand.  The distances they stand from each other seem to be right on as well.  I think this map does a terrific job of capturing the reader.  First, it allows you to click on any of the hotels, where you receive more in depth information regarding the history of the hotel, casino information, and random facts.  The map also attaches relevant articles, giving this map multiple uses. You also get a decade by decade peak in to how the stripped developed, simply by clicking on the proper decade in the navigation.  Overall, I found this map to be very informative, useful and entertaining at the same time.

The second map I chose to take a peek at was the FluTracker interactive map. This map serves its purpose by doing a few things very well.

1. Uses loud colors to attract the attention of the viewer
2. Offers further information when clicking on a data point
3. Allows the viewer to zoom in to see more in depth information of a specific area
4. Gives data on different forms of the flu

The third map I chose to analyze was The Geography of Jobs. I thought this map did some things great.  Here is a short list of some things that make this interactive map a terrific tool.

1. Uses Flash to bring the map alive
2. Differentiates jobs gained and jobs lost with different colors
3. Chose to use different sizes bubbles to show the amount of jobs gained and lost in a specific area
4. Offers a timeline ranging from 2004-2010

the wish hounds of dartmoor

There are many legends associated with Dartmoor,a wild and lonely place-idyllic and charming when the sun shines but the mood can change dramatically almost within minutes if the weather takes a turn for the worse and the place can take on a dangerous and forbidding feel; mists can descend and completly envelope one sometimes making the path you have taken impossible to find,panic ensues and the mind begins to imagine the stories you were told of people getting lost miles from civilisation and of flights of fancy concerning ghosts,pixies and demonic hounds..read on

View Larger Map

Visualizations are sometimes the best way to report information. This map is an example. It was produced on deadline in advance of a powerful Pacific storm that was expected to batter Los Angeles County areas ravaged by recent wildfires.

The map was embedded in post in L.A. Now, the breaking news blog for the Los Angeles Times.

Want to get out and about in Manchester by taking a stroll? Why not check out a new collection of Manchester Urban Culture Trails from Visit Manchester.

The first series is perfect for culture vultures covering:

• Radical Manchester – Museums and Galleries
• Creativity and the City – Contemporary Arts
• The Sound of Manchester – Music
• A City Performs – Theatres

The trails cover key sites and venues such as The Deaf Institute, CUBE, The Koffee Pot (who make the best bacon butty according to Guy Garvey of Elbow fame) and the Greenroom. The website offers an interactive map where you can explore each of the tours and get tips on the best watering holes or places to grab a bite to eat.

Once you are ready to hit the streets simply print out a map, get your walking boots on and hit the rainy city trail!

c/o Zach_ManchesterUK licensed under Creative Commons.

From www.npr.org are three interactive maps that show foreclosure and jobless rates as well as household income by county.  Interactive demographic maps are a great tool to give initial insight to a client before narrowing down site possibilities.

While I have never considered the location of something to be completely essential to understanding anything about what it is or what is done there, I am finding myself coming around to the concept of interactive mapping. Even if someone online doesn’t have a clue as to the area or location you may be referring to, and even if many people couldn’t care less, what you write about, if it is good enough, should always generate enough interest so that somebody, somewhere will want to find out more.

Interactive mapping allows for the easiest form of seeing eye-to-eye with your audience in terms of where what it is you’re talking about is. Even if they live in Australia for example, your audience can use interactive mapping technology to pinpoint a location and zoom out, just to get a better feel for what you’re talking about and where your opinion comes from.

With this in mind, I found the variations of interactive maps available at 10,000 words very interesting. Before seeing this site, I had been in the dark about the variational possibilities. Exposed solely to GoogleMaps and MapQuest, the variations at 10,000 words, most notably the horizonless map of Manhattan created by the London design team of Schulze & Webb, really resonated with me. I had never thought of the artistic capabilities until this new look at Manhattan opened my eyes to the potential of mapping in the digital age.

Another map that I found very visually appealing and incredibly profound, though not as artistic as the Manhattan one, was the “film noir-esque” global map available as a visualization of Twitter users who had just touched down at new destinations by airplane. This idea of taking users who are utilizing Twitter buzzwords to fall into the “currently traveling in the air” demographic and then mapping their departures and destinations is really fascinating, and it just beckons the question as to how limitless the interactive capabilities of Twitter really are.

The final map that really struck a chord with me was the visualization of the Binghampton shooting. I think what stood out most to me about the way they chose to go about this one was how plain the map itself looked. A 3D layout of the school, with a group of gray silhouettes and a caption depicting the grisly details seems too basic for a tragedy of this magnitude upon first glance. However, the longer I look at it, the more I begin to appreciate the simplicity of it. Such an act of unprovoked manslaughter doesn’t need bells and whistles to make it newsworthy. If anything, something like that should be told in the most straightforward and basic of manners; it is the information itself here that makes one pause and reflect, not the map.